Reluctant Father

“A few,” he muttered. “Which one of your mummy’s friends used language like that around you?”

“Just Trudy,” she said, wide-eyed.

Blake whistled through his teeth and turned just as Mrs. Jackson came in with a tray of milk and cookies for Sarah and coffee for Blake.

“I like coffee,” Sarah said. “My mommy let me drink it when she had hers in bed and she wasn’t awake good.”

“I’ll bet,” Blake said, “but you aren’t drinking it here. Coffee isn’t good for kids.”

“I can have coffee if I want to,” Sarah returned belligerently.

Blake looked at Mrs. Jackson, who was more or less frozen in place, staring at the little girl as she grabbed four cookies and proceeded to stuff them into her mouth as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

“You quit, or even try to quit,” Blake told the housekeeper, who’d looked after his uncle before him, “and so help me God, I’ll track you all the way to Alaska and drag you back here by one foot.”

“Me, quit? Just when things are getting interesting?” Mrs. Jackson lifted her chin. “God forbid.”

“Sarah, when was the last time you ate?” Blake inquired, watching her grab another handful of cookies.

“I had supper,” she said, “and then we came here.”

“You haven’t had breakfast?” he burst out. “Or lunch?”

She shook her head. “These cookies are good!”

“If you haven’t eaten for almost a day, I imagine so.” He sighed. “You’d better make us an early dinner tonight,” Blake told Mrs. Jackson. “She’ll eat herself sick on cookies if we’re not careful.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll go and make up the guest room for her,” she said. “But what about clothes? Does she have a suitcase?”

“No, that lawyer didn’t bring anything. Let her sleep in her slip tonight. Tomorrow,” he added, “you can take her into town to do some shopping.”

“Me?” Mrs. Jackson looked horrified.

“Somebody has to be sacrificed,” he told her pithily. “And I’m the boss.”

Mrs. Jackson’s lips formed a thin line. “I don’t know beans about little girls’ clothes!”

“Well, take her to Mrs. Donaldson’s shop,” he muttered. “That’s where King Roper and Elissa take their little girl to be outfitted. I heard King groan about the prices, but that won’t bother us any more than it bothers them.”

“Yes, sir.” She turned to leave.

“By the way, where’s the weekly paper?” he asked, because it always came on Thursday morning. “I wanted to see if our legal ad got in.”

Mrs. Jackson shifted uncomfortably and grimaced. “Well, I didn’t want to upset you…”

His eyebrows arched. “How could the weekly paper possibly upset me? Get it!”

“All right. If you’re sure that’s what you want.” She reached into the drawer of one of the end tables and pulled it out. “There you go, boss. And I’ll leave before the explosion, if you don’t mind.”

She exited, and Sarah took two more cookies while Blake stared down at the paper’s front page at a face that had haunted him.

“Author Meredith Calhoun to autograph at Baker’s Book Nook,” read the headline, and underneath it was a recent picture of Meredith.

His eyes searched over it in shock. The plain, skinny woman he’d hurt bore no resemblance to this peacock. Her brown hair was pulled back from her face into an elegant chignon. Her gray eyes were serene in a high-cheekboned face that could have graced the cover of a magazine, and her makeup enhanced the raw material that had always been there. She was wearing a pale suit coat with a pastel blouse, and she looked lovely. More than lovely. She looked soft and warm and totally untouched at the age of twenty-five, which she had to be now.

Blake put the paper down after scanning what he already knew about her skyrocketing career and her latest book, Choices, about a man and a woman trying to manage careers, marriage and parenthood all at once. He’d read it, as he secretly read all Meredith’s books, looking for traces of the past. Maybe even for a cessation of hostilities. But her feelings for him were buried and there was never a single trait he could recognize in her people that reminded him of himself. It was as if she sensed that he might look at them and had hidden anything that would give her inner feelings away.

Sarah Jane was standing beside him without his knowing it. She looked at the picture in the paper. “That’s a pretty lady,” Sarah said. She leaned forward and picked out a word in the column below the photograph. “B…o… o…k. Book,” she said proudly.

“So it is.” He pointed to the name. “How about that?”

“M…e…r…Merry Christmas,” she said.

He smiled faintly. “Meredith,” he corrected. “That’s her name. She’s a writer.”

“I had a book about the three bears,” Sarah told him. “Did she write that?”

“No. She writes books for big girls. Finish your cookies and you can watch television.”

“I like to watch Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street,” she said.

He frowned. “What?”

“They come on television.”

“Oh. Well, help yourself.”

He moved out of the room, ignoring the coffee. Which was sad, because Sarah Jane discovered it in the big silver pot and proceeded to help herself to the now cool liquid while he was on the telephone in the hall. Her cry caused him to drop the receiver in mid-sentence.

She was drenched in coffee and screaming her head off. She wasn’t the only wet thing, either. The carpet and part of the sofa were saturated and the tray was an inch deep with black liquid.

“I told you to stay out of the coffee, didn’t I?” Blake said as he knelt to see if she had been burned. Which, thank God, she hadn’t; she was more frightened than hurt.

“I wanted some,” she murmured tearfully. “I ruined my pretty dress.”

“That isn’t all that’s going to get ruined, either,” he said ominously, and abruptly tugged her over his knee and gave her bottom a slap. “When I say no, I mean no. Do you understand me, Sarah Jane Donavan?” he asked firmly.

She was too surprised to cry anymore. She stared at him warily. “Is that my name now?”

“It’s always been your name,” he replied. “You’re a Donavan. This is your home.”

“I like coffee,” she said hesitantly.

“And I said you weren’t to drink it,” he reminded her.

She took a deep breath. “Okay.” She picked up the coffeepot, only to have it taken from her and put on the table. “I can clean it up,” she said. “Mommy always made me clean up my mess.”

“This is more than you can cope with, sprout. And God only knows what we’re going to put on you while those things are washed.”